Filming The Bag Swap.

In Annabel's lesson, we proceeded to film our short clip. Max and Sharmin were the actors, whilst I took the role of setting up the tripod and filming. To be honest, we didn't really write much down when planning, during the previous lesson, and that became clear when we began to film.


To begin with, we filmed in the basement corridor of the college (as we were limited to within college grounds). We chose this location as it is very dark, and therefore in keeping with the thriller theme. However, after shooting about four shots, we realised that although it was dark, its small size was very limiting and uninteresting, so therefore not the best location to film our bag swap clip.


We decided to move to the staircase, so although it was well lit, due to the large windows, suspense was still created, due to the bright light levels, which created an air of mystery. The stairs were also a very good location for shooting different types of shot, which made our clip very interesting, for example the point of view shots, when Max and Sharmin were walking up and down the stairs, and i was able to shoot low and high angle shots.


Things that I think went particularly well:


Using the tripod to create steady shots, and for panning
The different use and wide variety of shot types, especially over the shoulder and point of view shots.
The use of zooming to create suspense.


Things that didn't go as well as they could have gone:
We shot too much- we got slightly carried away when filming and ended up with a grand total of 48 shots when we were asked for 12!
Safely balancing the tripod on the stairs, it was quite risky, so somebody had to hold it, which made it awkward, because it meant that there was a risk of reflection in the window.